Set 14: Routing algorithms

Dr. Anirudh Paranjothi

Oklahoma State University
CS 4283/5383

11/2/23 Computer Networks AP 14-1

 Objectives

• Routing algorithms
– Shortest Path Routing
– Flooding
– Distance Vector Routing
– Link State Routing
– Hierarchical Routing
– Broadcast Routing
– Multicast Routing

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 Hierarchical Routing
• Our routing study thus far - idealization
– all routers identical
– network “flat”
… not true in practice
• Administrative autonomy
– Internet = network of networks
– Each network admin may want to control routing in its own network

• All routing algorithms have difficulties as the network becomes large

– For large networks, the routing tables grow very quickly, and so does the number of flood
packets
– with 200 million destinations:
» can’t store all dest’s in routing tables!
» routing table exchange would swamp links!
• How can this be reduced? Hierarchical routing
• Objective: To reduce the number of entries in a router table to
– Reduce router CPU requirements
– Speeding up lookup
– Reduce memory requirements at routers

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 Hierarchical Routing: Example
• Implementation:
• Segment the network into regions
• Routers in a single region know all the details about other routers in that region, but
none of the details about routers in other regions
• Analogy: Telephone area codes

• Aggregate routers into regions,

“autonomous systems” (AS)
• Routers in same AS run same
routing protocol
– “intra-AS” routing protocol
– routers in different AS can run
different intra-AS routing protocol

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 Intra-AS and Inter-AS routing

C.b
B.a gateway routers
• special routers in AS
A.a • run intra-AS routing
b A.c c protocol with all other
a C a
routers in AS
b • also responsible for routing
a B to destinations outside AS
– run inter-AS routing
d c protocol with other
b
gateway routers
A

network layer
inter-AS, intra-AS link layer
routing in
gateway A.c physical layer

11/2/23 Computer Networks AP 14-5

 Intra-AS and Inter-AS routing

Inter-AS
C.b routing
between B.a
A.a A and B Host
b A.c c h2
a C a
b
a B
Host d c Intra-AS routing
h1 b
A within AS B
Intra-AS routing
within AS A

11/2/23 Computer Networks AP 14-6

 Broadcast routing
• Distinct packets
Examples of broadcast routing:
– Send distinct packets to all destinations - Distribution of weather reports
- Stock market updates
» Too many packets generated - live radio programs
• Flooding
– Generates too many packets
• Multidestination routing
– Each packet contains a list of destinations
– A router copies an incoming packet and forwards them on links required to reach
the destinations contained in the packet
» Each outgoing packet from a router only contains those destinations that are
to use that link
• Spanning tree (a tree containing all the nodes in a network, but has no
loops. Example: Sink tree)
– Generates only a minimum number of packets à excellent use of bandwidth
– Problem: each router must have knowledge of some spanning tree.
• Reverse path forwarding (see next slide)

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 Broadcast Routing: Reverse path forwarding
• Reverse path forwarding: Rely on router’s knowledge of unicast shortest path from it
to sender. Simple algorithm to break loops:

• Advantage: Each router only needs to know the next hop along its least cost path to
sender.

Reverse path forwarding. (a) A subnet. (b) a Sink tree. (c) The tree built by reverse path forwarding.

11/2/23 Computer Networks AP 14-8

 Multicast Routing

• Multicast: act of sending datagram to multiple receivers with single “transmit”

operation
– analogy: one teacher to many students
• Question: how to achieve multicast

Multicast via unicast

• source sends N unicast
datagrams, one addressed to
each of N receivers

routers multicast receiver (red)

forward unicast
not a multicast receiver
datagrams
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 Multicast: one sender to many receivers

• Multicast: act of sending datagram to multiple receivers with single “transmit”

operation
– analogy: one teacher to many students
• Question: how to achieve multicast

Network multicast
• Routers actively participate in multicast,
making copies of packets as needed
and forwarding towards multicast
receivers

Multicast
routers (red) duplicate and
forward multicast datagrams
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 Multicast: one sender to many receivers

• Multicast: act of sending datagram to multiple receivers with single “transmit”

operation
– analogy: one teacher to many students
• Question: how to achieve multicast

Application-layer multicast
• end systems involved in multicast copy
and forward unicast datagrams among
themselves

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 Multicast: 2 groups

(a) A network. (b) A spanning tree for the leftmost router. (c) A “pruned” multicast tree for group 1. (d) A
“pruned” multicast tree for group 2.

11/2/23 Computer Networks AP 14-14